Rumble in the Jungle
Rumble in the Jungle
This week, our focus book has been Rumble in the Jungle by Giles Andreae and David Wojtowycz.
The book is a collection of fun animal poems. Whilst reading, the children enjoyed listening for rhyming words and noticing the patterns made with the words.
Our word of the week is Rainforest. We’ve been learning all about geographical features of rainforests and about some of the animals who live there.
In our writing, we’ve been writing facts about rainforests. Lots of children are challenging themselves to write more and use finger spaces!
Maths
In maths this week, we’ve continued to develop our understanding of the composition of numbers to 10. Using the rhyme ’10 Fat Sausages’, we have found different ways to represent 10.
We have also used 10 frames and dice patterns to show ‘5 and a bit’ numbers to 10.
Phonics
This week we have continued to read longer words as well as compound words such as windmill, handstand and lunchbox.
We’ve learnt the tricky words; there, when, what, one.
Help at home- Please continue to work through the weekly learn at home phonics sheets. We’ll continue to send these home each Friday.
Poetry Picnic
Each week we will be learning a new poem. We will recite this poem each day. By saying the poem out loud, we can focus on the sounds and rhythm of each word or line. We talk to the children about how this can help us become better readers. This week’s poem is called A Little Shell.
More learning from this week…
Reminders and Dates
Friday 23 May- School Closed: Training Day
IA – What superstars!
What a great half term so far! 1A have returned to school with a fabulous attitude and an enthusiasm for learning this half term. They have, rightfully, earned the last 5 marbles for the class jar by engaging in learning and making good choices and they are well on the way to gaining all the healthy toppings for our pizza class reward chart. We had fun on the Adventure Playground as a fitting reward for filling the jar.
Keep it up 1A. You are amazing and we are so proud of you!
Welcome to Summer Term
Welcome back ! We hope that you all had a lovely Easter break. We’ve heard all about your Easter holiday trips and visits from the Easter Bunny. The children have returned to Nursery brilliantly and settled in happily to the final term of the year. We’ve had a very busy week in Nursery.
We’ve enjoyed the sunny weather preparing our planters for seeds and planting our beans outside. Thanks for letting us know how the children’s beans are growing at home, we’ve had some fantastic photos sent in.
We created a bike wash following the children’s interest. Using our large muscle movements to scrub with brushes and sponges.
In maths, we looked at the number four. We can show number 4 on our fingers, we clapped and jumped four times. We looked at objects that are all linked to the number four.
Help at home: Can you count objects at home? How many forks or spoons do we need on the table at tea time ? Encourage your child to count carefully, pointing to or moving each object as they say they number name. How many socks do you wear? Can you put 4 bricks/ cars/ pencils away?
We also visited some new friends at home visits. It was lovely getting to know them. Everyone is looking forward to welcoming them next week.
Next week
We will begin our new theme with the story ” The Very Hungry Caterpillar”
We will also be watching our very own ” hungry caterpillars” grow and change.
Our Nursery Rhyme of the week is “1,2,3,4,5, Once I caught a Fish Alive”
Our sound of the week is Vv
Reminders
Can everyone please check that their child’s shoes are named, we realise that sometimes names can rub off. We have a few children with identical footwear this year and they are getting muddled up. Having names in shoes helps us to solve this problem.
We hope that you have a happy and healthy weekend and thankyou for your continued support.
The Bug Collector
We’re excited to be back together for a happy and healthy Summer term!
This half term is called Life on Earth. We’ll be exploring minibeasts, wild animals and the human body.
This week, we’ve been reading The Bug Collector by Alex Griffiths.
This book follows George as he visits a wildlife museum and discovers the fascinating world of bugs. After his visit, he collects all the minibeasts from his garden and puts them in jars, but they don’t seem very happy.
After reading the book, the children enjoyed being minibeast explorers in our own garden. However, they made sure to return the creatures safely to their natural habitat.
In our writing, we shared the key message from the story and explored different ways we can care for bugs.
Maths
In Maths, we’ve been counting beyond ten- to twenty. We’ve been suggesting ways to make counting easier, when we are faced with a lot of objects to count.
We’ve also been counting things that cannot be moved, or things that cannot be seen such as sounds/actions.
Phonics
Summer 1 week 1 has been an introduction to reading phase 4 words. We’ve also learnt our first phase 4 tricky words; said, so, have, like
Help at home- Please continue to work through the weekly learn at home phonics sheets, throughout the Summer term. We’ll continue to send these home each Friday.
Poetry Picnic
Each week we will be learning a new poem. We will recite this poem each day. By saying the poem out loud, we can focus on the sounds and rhythm of each word or line. We talk to the children about how this can help us become better readers. This week’s poem is called Pitter Patter.
We talk about how a poem sometimes has rhyming words and sometimes doesn’t. Can your child tell you the rhyming words in this week’s poem? We also talk about how a poem can have a fast rhythm or a slow rhythm.
PE
This half term, we are focusing on developing netball skills such as throwing and catching. The children especially enjoyed challenging themselves to throw the ball, tap their heads, and then catch it again.
More pictures of our learning this week…
Reminders and Dates
SWIMMING DATES- Summer 1
Rainbow Class- 7 May, 21 May
Sunshine Class- 30 Apr, 14 May
Welcome back 2C!
It has been great to get back to school this week – only 12 weeks left of this academic year!
I am very impressed at how well each member of 2C has come back into school. It looks like they brought the sunshine with them too! Let’s hope it stays…
The children settled back into their routines very well and have already produced some fantastic pieces of work! We are all using leading lines in our handwriting now and in maths our number fact knowledge is strong!
Well done to this superstar for winning the handwriting trophy this week!
In Maths this week we have been looking at measurement with a focus on centimetres.
We found out that some children were the same height as the largest recorded watermelon in history, the back wheel of a tractor and a male baboon!
Our Living and Learning focus has been about allergies, signs to look out for and what might causes allergies.
Help at home: by practising handwriting (with a focus on weekly spellings), using leading lines. Please see our handwriting policy for reference.
Easter celebrations
This week, we’ve been learning about how some Christians celebrate Easter. We’ve made Easter cards, painted patterns on eggs, filled eggs in the sensory Easter tray and explored the interest table.
We listen to a story called ” We are going on an Easter Hunt” enjoying re-telling the story as the rabbits passed chicks, lambs and bees on the hunt. We followed some Easter traditions by decorating eggs and rolling them, going on an Easter hunt and tasting Hot Cross Buns. We spotted the important symbol of the cross on the top.
Help at home – Some of our older children are learning to hear the initial sounds in words. What can you find that begins with a ‘l’? You might find a lemon, a lolly or a leaf.
For our younger children in yellow group, this might be a little tricky. You could enjoy singing a rhyme related to Easter such as ‘Chick, chick, chicken‘ or ‘Little Peter Rabbit‘.
We hope that you all have a happy and healthy Easter holiday and enjoy some family time together. We’ll look forward to hearing all about your adventures when we return to Nursery on Tuesday 22 April.
Rabbits don’t lay eggs
We’ve been building up to the Easter half-term break with some egg-streamly egg-citing activities!
Rabbits Don’t Lay Eggs
We’ve been reading Rabbits Don’t Lay Eggs by Paula Metcalf.
Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog along the play bar and turn off auto play – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip.
The story begins on a farm, with a rabbit named Rupert. All he wants is to be useful but unfortunately, he struggles to find anything he’s good at. Luckily, he soon finds an unexpected job on the farm!
Our ‘word of the week’ is creation – something that is made or created.
We also spotted some other adventurous words in the story:
Giggled to laugh lightly and repeatedly (a lot) in a silly way.
Glumly to look unhappy and disappointed.
In our writing, we transcribed the sentence Chicks are born on a farm. We also had a go at creating our own sentences, with spring pictures to inspire us!
Understanding the World; Easter
Through our literacy and RE learning, we’ve been discussing how we celebrate Easter and where our traditions come from.
We learnt that Easter is a Christian celebration and listened to the Easter story.
In provision, we’ve been exploring lots of Easter themed activities- we’ve loved going on egg hunts in the garden!
Maths
In Maths, we’ve been identifying the same and different attributes of various objects – e.g. colour, size, shape. We’ve been choosing ways to sort the objects.
We have also re-visited ways to identify ‘odd’ and ‘even’ numbers- we noticed that all of our even numbers are doubles!
In provision, we’ve been exploring doubles by putting the same number of eggs into 2 baskets and finding the total amount, we’ve been making repeating patterns using Easter objects and we’ve been playing a subtising/counting game! What a lot of maths skills!
Farmer Luke
On Thursday, we caught up with Farmer Luke via Zoom.
He started by showing us the tractor he uses to plant seeds and showed the children that these special tractors have tracks, not wheels, to protect the soil.
Luke showed us the different parts of the cultivator that work together to plant the grass seeds.
He asked the children to guess one of the plants- well done to Jenson, who knew it was a blackberry bush! Luke sends blackberries off in June/July to be turned into Ribena- yum!
Luke then answered some of our questions. We learnt lots, such as how long it takes for the grass to grow, where the tractors are kept and which jobs happened on the farm over winter.
We found out that winter is “less busy”. Lots of small jobs happen, such as pruning, farming the chickens, trimming edges and chopping up wood from fallen trees. Luke said “now it’s spring and things are growing, there’s lots more jobs to do!”
Bean Plants
Before we sent our bean plants home this week, we looked closely at the changes and how they had started to grow. If you decide to plant your bean at home, we’d love to see!
Poetry Picnic
Each week we will be learning a new poem. We will recite this poem each day. By saying the poem out loud, we can focus on the sounds and rhythm of each word or line. We talk to the children about how this can help us become better readers. This week’s poem is called A Little Seed.
We talk about how a poem sometimes has rhyming words and sometimes doesn’t. Can your child tell you the rhyming words in this week’s poem? We also talk about how a poem can have a fast rhythm or a slow rhythm.
We always look at two words in the poem and share the definition. This week, we looked at the following words.
sow – plant (seed) by scattering or putting in soil
shower – a short period (time) of rain
click here to watch Reception recite this week’s poem!
Egg rolling competition!
We finished the week with our egg rolling competition. We saw super- creative decorated eggs- thank you for your amazing efforts. Well done to our winners, whose eggs rolled their way to victory!
Home learning
Can you write a diary about your half term? A sentence a day would be fantastic! Please bring your diary in to share when we return to school.
Writing reminder…
Remember, it is okay for things to be spelt phonetically. It is important your child grows into an independent learner. Encouraging your child to write the words as they sound rather than always spelling correctly is important. It encourages your child to use their own skills – rather than copy from an adult.
It is important you do not let your child simply copy your writing. They need to use their phonics skills to write. Here is an example of a child’s writing in Reception.
Final message and getting ready for year one!
On your return to school on the 22 April, we’ll be entering the final full term of Reception. The first step of the transition towards year one, is getting the children ready to come into school independently.
To support us with this, we are asking that children enter the classroom/cloakroom on their own from 22 April. We know a few children have started to do this already, which is great to see!
We encourage you to wave goodbye at the waving window and our door is always open for you to continue to pop in for a chat, if needed.
Thank you for your support.
We wish you all a lovely half-term break- see you in 2 weeks!
Reminders and Dates
SWIMMING DATES- Summer 1
Living and Learning and Science visitors in KS1
This half term we have been very fortunate to welcome some visitors into school.
A Living and Learning visitor
A couple of weeks ago we had the pleasure of hosting Lindsey from Diversity Role Models. She came to deliver a workshop on how important diversity is in all of our lives.
She read the story Odd Dog Out (which we all loved!) and then handed out coloured stickers. We needed to make groups by finding all the people who had the same colour as us before creating long ‘sausage dogs’ by linking together.
In each class, the teachers had been left in a group all on their own. They described how that made them feel.
It was so lovely how the children instantly offered for them to join their groups and we all decided that it was far better to create a rainbow dog where everyone could join in and be included.
Science visitor
Today we welcomed James from Solar For Schools into our classes. Firstly, he talked to us about what electricity is and how it can travel. We saw how, when we are connected, a circuit is created and electricity can travel through us. When we let go of a hand, the circuit broke and the electricity didn’t work.
He gave us wires, mini solar panels, mini lights, mini motors and mini buzzers. He showed us how to make a circuit to make them all work and we learned that if we covered up the solar panel, the circuit wouldn’t have any power and therefore, it wouldn’t work.
What fun we’ve had… And the half term isn’t even over yet!
Help at home: by talking to your child about differences and how people’s differences make our world an interesting and diverse place. You could also talk to your child about all the things that use electricity in your home. What are the things that use electricity? How do they work?
Railways, Reading and Rockets!
The National Railway Museum
On Monday, the children had a fantastic time at The National Railway Museum. They were very excited to go on their first ever school trip – especially travelling there by coach! We were super impressed with how well-behaved the children were. Well done, Reception class.
The children enjoyed looking at different trains and making comparisons of old and new. They had lots of fun watching the miniature railway and it led to lots of great discussions about trains, tunnels and transport. The children especially enjoyed sitting on the Japanese Bullet train.
To end our wonderful visit, we drew our favourite train of the day!
Literacy
We’ve been reading The Hundred Decker Rocket, by Mike Smith.
This story is about a girl called Ivy who sets off on an expedition to space- expedition is our word of the week! On the way, she meets some very messy aliens. When her rocket breaks down, the aliens help to fix it and make their own deck.
The story inspired lots of discussion around keeping our planet clean and why this is important.
In our writing, we designed our very own rocket deck that we will be making next week- this is where we need your help…
Please send your child into school with an empty shoebox next week. The children will be creating their very own deck, based on their designs.
Computing; Beebots
We’ve continued exploring Beebots. Beebots are a fun, early coding resource. We program the bee using directional buttons. The children had to pre-plan the algorithm they needed to enter, to successfully get the bee to its intended location (for example, a specific spot on the carpet)
Living and learning; Celebrating differences
Our living and learning statement this week is: I know we’re all the same and we’re all different.
On Wednesday, were were visited by Lindsey from Diversity Role Models.
The children listened to the story Mixed by Arree Chung
a charming and thought-provoking picture book with characterful illustrations and humour. Follow the colours as they overcome their differences in this sweet tale of acceptance and celebrating difference.
The children loved the story and it introduced us to some new, important vocabulary; diversity, harmony, vibrant.
The children had some thoughtful answers to Lindsey’s questions:
Why is being different good? “’cause we all like different things”-Lola
What would happen if we were all the same? “it would be confusing”- Robyn, “it would be boring”-Delilah
World Book Day
Thank you to the parents and carers who were able to join us for our stay and read session on Thursday, for World Book Day.
As part of our celebrations, the children enjoyed talking about their favourite books from home.
Another highlight of the day was when our friends from years 5/6 came to class to read with us!
On Tuesday, the children took part in a live story and draw-along with the author (Swapna Haddow) and illustrator (Aditi Kakade Beaufrand) of The Night Before Holi
As well as an opportunity to enjoy a new story, the children learnt about this Hindu festival, which welcomes the arrival of springtime.
Phonics
This week, the children have reviewed air, er and longer words that contain double letters.
Help at home; phonics challenge
Write these words on paper and ask your child to underline the double letters before reading them.
hammer shimmer cannot chatter muffin
Tricky words can be just that-tricky! We’ve previously introduced a few fun games you can play at home to practise tricky words. Here’s another you could try…
Secret password
Write different tricky words on paper and stick them next to different doors around the house.
Each time your child enters or leaves a room they must press and say the tricky word password.
Poetry Picnic
Each week we learn a new poem and we recite this poem every day. By saying the poem out loud, we can focus on the sounds and rhythm of each word or line. We talk to the children about how this can help us become better readers. This week’s poem was Pancakes by Christina Rossetti
We talk about how a poem sometimes has rhyming words and sometimes doesn’t. Can your child tell you the rhyming words in this week’s poem? We also talk about how a poem can have a fast rhythm or a slow rhythm. Can your child re-tell this week’s poem to you?
We hope you enjoyed watching the children recite this week’s poem aloud, in LIVE ACTION during our stay and read on World Book Day!
Dates for your diary
Reception’s Class Assembly- Thursday 13 March, 2.45pm
Stay and learn: Number Session 2- Tuesday 18 March, 9-10am This is an opportunity for you to come into school to find out about the Early Years Curriculum and watch your child learning in school. This session is our second with a focus on maths.
These dates are also stuck to your child’s classroom door or window to view whenever needed.
KS1 – A little early World Book Day treat
Today, all three KS1 classes had the amazing opportunity to experience a zoom call with the renowned author Julia Donaldson and the talented illustrator Axel Scheffler.
The session started with Axel Scheffler reading us the story ‘The Smeds and The Smoos’. He then drew Bill and Janet from the story. We had a go at drawing along… but it was very fast!
Julia Donaldson then read us her story ‘Tiddler’. It was really lovely to hear for ourselves how she had imagined the voices would sound in the story. We listened attentively before Axel Scheffler then showed us how to draw Tiddler and Little Johnny Dory.
What a great start to the week!
Help at home: There are so many Julia Donladson stories, perhaps you could share some of them together at home. You can also find animated versions of the stories that we heard today a on BBC iplayer.
The Smeds and The Smoos
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001gncf/the-smeds-and-the-smoos
Tiddler
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0026dm6/tiddler